Thursday, 30 January 2014

Biography:
We spent our high school years together going to punk rock shows, listening to Deftones on repeat, skateboarding around the suburbs and spending weekends starting short-lived bands in sealed up spare rooms and basements.

Our musical tastes were bolstered after hearing Poison the Well's Tear From The Red for the first time in 2003, inspiring us to start a new band.

This first line up consisted of Jon on drums, David on lead guitar, Kimon on rhythm guitar and Brett on bass and vocals.

Steven came on board as a vocalist a few months after when we discovered he could scream while singing along to Finch's Falling Into Place EP. Up until that point, none of us (including himself) knew he could.

It might sound trivial, but that was a huge step for us, having a singer who could produce the same sounds as the vocalists from the bands we were getting into.

With Steven joining the line up, Brett was free to focus on melodic vocals, giving the band its distinctive dual vocal sound. David would also often provide additional vocals, as heard at the end of our first release 'Icarus Theory'.

Kimon performed at numerous live shows and contributed to a lot of the initial song writing process (his metal inspiration can be heard in 'Life Through Lesson') but had to make the hard choice of leaving the band to focus on his studies in 2005.

We were heart broken, but Armour had turned into something we couldn't give up on and our friend Jon Shaban, who we had been experimenting with on violin, joined on guitar and backing vocals, adding a whole new element to the band.

In our time together we performed at numerous clubs across the Western Cape including Mercury, The Whammy Bar, Wynberg Sports Club, Lanner's Landing, The Purple Turtle, Gandalf's, Roots and Acoustic Cafe.

Festivals include Knife Fight Festival II and III, Witchfest, Riot at the Madhouse and Rocktopia.

Armour disbanded after finishing our full length self-titled album, which was recorded and engineered between 2006 and 2007.

Our personalities, looming professional occupations, studies and the stress from gigging almost non-stop since our inception were all contributing factors, but we remained close friends and consider those old issues to be dead and buried for good.

In 2014 we announced a reunion show.

This is something we have been talking about for a long time but haven't been able to realise with Steven living in the UK. We're not sure what's to follow but are extremely excited and incredibly humbled by the interest in this event. We're going to make it worth your while. - from the band

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South African Punk

A really cool kid once asked "...Where is our music?!".Well here it is!

RIP Johnny Way

This blog has been started to try and put together a documented audio history of past and present music from the South Afican punk scene / DIY underground.This is about sharing some of the music we make and have made. rather than trying to sell a product.Most of everything posted is out of print + I will have asked permission to post from the creators of the work but sometimes this can be very difficult... if not impossible.So if you have a copyright issue with something that I have posted and would like it removed please let me know in the comments.